Black-owned South African integrated agency soars with Chevron

Landing the digital account with Chevron South Africa has opened doors for AVATAR Agency, South Africa’s largest majority black-owned and managed integrated marketing agency.

In addition to partnering with the business of the oil major, the agency has secured access to funding from Chevron South Africa to expand its business.

Chevron South Africa’s executive chairman Shashi Rabbipal said in a statement that interest-free unsecured financing has been provided to AVATAR as part of its Enterprise and Supplier Development (E&SD) procurement programme.

“We have identified businesses that are at minimum 51% black-owned and have committed to enhancing their development and growth aspirations through funding, close collaboration and support that includes procurement of their goods and services. Chevron South Africa recognises that we are in a unique position to influence the growth of our current suppliers to through the power of our Enterprise and Supplier Development programme.”

Chevron outlined that matching suppliers with business opportunities provides support for entrepreneurs to grow market share and take their businesses to the next level of expansion in South Africa and globally.

“Capital is the oxygen that fuels entrepreneurs. AVATAR has gone from start-up to mid-sized agency in five years and access to innovative funding has allowed us to go to the next level with new hires such as an internationally renowned Executive Creative Director, Brett Wild and several critical operational roles that have laid a foundation for our growth,” said Zibusiso Mkhwanazi, Chief Executive Officer for AVATAR360 Group and M&N Brands.

AVATAR aims to grow a sustainable business that creates employment and positions the agency and its founding values into the rest of Africa and beyond as a result of the Chevron funding.

“One of the key pillars in our transformation objectives is the level of support that we provide to entrepreneurs. They know best how to grow their own businesses and Chevron has the resources to be a strategic partner. It’s a unique proposition and a partnership where mentoring and sustainability are key,” concludes Rabbipal.

About Author

Thabo Mphahlele is the BizNis Africa Head of Sales and Marketing.
Mphahlele was previously MultiChoice Production Support Analyst responsible for developing and monitoring applications.
In addition, Mphahlele develops and automates batch scripts and is responsible for the daily infrastructure maintenance at MultiChoice.
As a Production Support Analyst, he is responsible for incident analysis solving , developing and constructing business reports for SQL and Oracle and implement change controls for the business.
Additional responsibility includes monitoring system performance via SOA, Kibaba (Elasticsearch), H.P BSM, HP Sitescope.
Mphahlele is responsible for creating infrastructure performance reports through HP Ops Analytics, monitoring payments via Splunk and in-house built-in tool and disaster recovery simulation and testing.
At Nashua Mobile, he was responsible for application development and enhancing the web sites
At South West Gauteng College, he was the IT Technician and Network Administrator.
During his tenure at Double Digit Media, he was he focused on application and web site development for new and existing clients
Mphahlele contributes as a Content Manager for BizNis Africa.

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